The good news about the minimum wage proposal hammered out in City Hall last week and approved by 10 supervisors is that there is now but one. Low-wage-worker advocates abandoned a competing measure as part of the deal. Now voters must decide what's best for San Francisco.

A single ballot measure offers clarity but in no way reduces the complexity of how to serve low-wage workers, businesses and the San Francisco community as a whole.

Mayor Ed Lee, who had pledged in January to put a measure on the ballot to raise San Francisco's minimum wage, deserves praise for his dogged work to forge a consensus measure. Supervisor Jane Kim, representatives from labor, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the mayor's team met until they found a way past the sticking point: the first year's raise. Labor wanted the wage to rise quickly. Business, and especially small business and nonprofit employers, wanted it to rise gradually. The compromise was a $1.51 increase the first year, 75 cents the next, then $1 a year until $15 is reached in 2018.

The case for lifting the wage is compelling:

-- 100,000 of the city's lowest-paid workers would take home more pay.

-- More money would go directly into the economy as low-wage workers tend to spend locally.

-- There is one wage, not difficult-to-enforce separate schedules for big and small businesses.

Yet the consensus measure ignores the very real concerns of small business owners and restaurant owners. Unlike the much ballyhooed minimum wage deal approved two weeks ago by Seattle's City Council, the San Francisco measure does not include credit for tips or for employer-paid health care. By law, San Francisco employers must offer workers health insurance or pay into a fund for employee health care. Funds unused after two years revert to the employer. But that local law is complicated by the rollout of the federal Affordable Care Act, which bars workers from using the funds in those accounts and employers from retrieving unused funds.

Seattle's measure raises that city's minimum wage to $15 over seven years and gives credit for tips and health care contributions. This formulation seems more realistic in a city that is expensive to live in, but also expensive to do business in.

"San Francisco is the most progressive city in America when it comes to addressing income inequality," Mayor Lee proclaimed in a bit of political one-upmanship over his hometown of Seattle. Rivalry is fine, but it is not clear San Francisco has embraced the winning strategy. Voters should think long and hard before voting in November on how to raise other people's pay.